a photographer’s approach to social media marketing
As a photographer, social media marketing can be a huge pain. What you have worked on for years, all the experience you build up shooting, the high quality of the work you are producing, is worthless when it comes to social media marketing.
The primary thing I have discovered while growing my own photography business is: the quality of your photos are not directly related to the success of your photography business.
I want to show you how today’s social media marketing is based on a outbound marketing system and why, when building phlow, we have focussed on creating an inbound marketing process instead.
social media marketing is simply showing off to the people you know
I like to think I know photographers quite well; after all I am one. When photographers have a great photo they want to world to see, they share it on one or many of their social media platforms. But we tend to be lazy creatures, and for most of us that’s the extent of our social media marketing.
The issue we have (yes, I include myself in that group) is that we don’t spend enough time spreading that photo (and our presence) into the areas where we are still unknown. The result is that we are seen by the people that know us already. Most probably many of them are either our friends, or they are already our clients. Meaning our efforts, well if we can call it like such, tries to sell to those who are not the most interested buyers.
Don’t get me wrong, Social media is a great tool. If nothing else, I adore the fact that I can connect with my family and the friends I have all over the world, regardless of where we are.
Alas, social media marketing they way most of us use it, has a limited impact on the growth of our business. Social media should be used as an amazing way to showcase what we do, but the very foundations on which social media is built, the relationship between two individuals, limits what we can achieve in terms of marketing.
So… we start to hack a system that was designed to solve other problems.
Facebook was conceived as a way for friends to connect and keep them engaged online; it was not designed with the photographer who wants to promote her business in mind. Yes, we can still use Facebook and Instagram to do it, but we have to accept the limitations we face and spend a lot of time on them.
I want to be seen by people who don’t know me already
One of the things I very quickly is that I don’t need to be constantly pushing myself to existing/previous clients. My business process works well me, and ensures that I keep in touch with them; I do this because I genuinely like them and like keeping in touch with them — “catching up”, but it is also my re-marketing strategy.
The hardest thing however is being seen by someone new. The ideal client that wants to hire you, the one who doesn’t already know who you are. This is the person I want to focus my marketing efforts towards.
Social media marketing on Instagram, Facebook and other social networks is weak because the way the potential customers are identified is weak. This is what we want to change with phlow, and not just for photographers, but for potential clients as well.
Google became so successful because it connects the business with the person actively searching for something specific. With phlow we emulate this concept, putting your business in front of the people who love what you create, and we see this as a bridge that works both ways.
weak tactics of outbound marketing on social media
If you think back to the start of the article, I referred to social media marketing as “outbound marketing”, because you have to stand up and go hunting for new leads.
There was a time in my photographic career in which I believed in “overnight success”. I believed that by publishing content, clients would come, but I didn’t work to tweak my message and ensure the message was heard by the right ears.
On Instagram and Twitter you can use the #hashtag system to do this, on other social networks you have to expand your network to expand your reach. It is a lot of work however to grow the number of people you know organically — and we all know that buying followers simply doesn’t work.
Try this… Open Instagram, publish a #portrait photo and then jump to the #portrait tag, liking and commenting on as many photographs you can.
The time spent doing this aside, everything seems jolly good, until you realise you are expanding your network with people who like to publish the same content you do — you are marketing your photography to other photographers.
Have you noticed how many photographers offer workshops and courses nowadays? One of the reasons is that it is much easier to reach the other photographers that are interested in this, than the clients who want to be photographed by you!
outbound marketing; even on social media, is hard work, time consuming and an inefficient use of your time and skills.
magic bullet of marketing… inbound marketing
Let’s forget social media for a minute and how we hack it in an attempt to reach someone that cares about us, and let’s imagine something new.
Let’s imagine the “magic bullet” that markets your business for you while you sleep. How would it work?
I believe every user should be positioned at the centre of the universe. I want to be allowed to focus on my passion, on the photographs about stuff I am really into.
Removing my “friends” from the editorial helm of what I see online, and replacing them with a curator, is step one: the photographs I see now become the important aspect and themselves gain relevance, not their publishers or editors.
As a photographer, by supplying the content that people want to see in whatever niche you operate, the curator ensures that it is seen by the most relevant people. Isn’t this what your social media marketing efforts are geared towards and trying to achieve? The only difference is you don’t need to play the “social whore” for hours each day in order for it to work and your work to be noticed.
phlow is the “magic bullet” of marketing.
Yes it is still in its infancy, and we are working hard to fill it with great content and amazing photographers. But, we want to show everyone a way of connecting photographers and clients in a way that simplifies the process of matching them from both sides.
drawback (?) of inbound marketing
We have grown so accustomed to outbound marketing with regards social media lately, that switching to phlow does come with a drawback.
If you no longer need to invest your time in networking or reaching out, you have a surplus of time on your hands. Adding to the fact that the curation of phlow is designed to help great photographs be seen: you need better photographs!
I jest of course. As a photographer, passionate about capturing unique and interesting moment, isn’t this a liberation? Isn’t phlow a real “magic bullet”
we need your help
We can’t do this alone, phlow doesn’t work unless people like yourself support and use it. We need you, the photographer stressed with your current social media marketing efforts.
We need your great photographs and your feedback.
We need you as a photography lover, to tell us what you like to see and how we can foster your passions.
phlow is not simply another social network, you don’t have to spend time mingling, being the “social whore”…
So why not try phlow? You have nothing to lose.
As a photographer, you will find me posting portraits and photos of boudoir sessions; however, you will find me consuming a lot of photographs of surfing, yoga and fitness. This is the difference between me as photographer, and me as potential client.
What will you post? What will you consume? #findyourphlow
